Résumé

Doug St.James, Technical Product Manager

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Summary

  • Accomplished and passionate professional with 15 years experience building products for the web.
  • Experience working with a myriad of technologies in all aspects of managing and developing web products – from requirements gathering, design, development, documentation, quality assurance, and iterative improvement.
  • Proven ability to lead continuous product development and collaborate with other product leaders.
  • Successfully led the implementation of many high profile projects facilitating and translating key communication between business groups, project managers, QA, and technical teams.
  • Excellent organizational, critical thinking, troubleshooting, and problem-solving skills with a technical and liberal arts background.
  • Effective communicator able to bridge the gap between frontline engineers and business owners, to convey appropriate timelines and expose potential risks.
  • Demonstrated versatility with experience with many programming languages, ad serving technology, SEO best practices, analytics, social integration, Agile methodology.

Professional Experience

Turner Broadcasting System, INC (April, 2014 – present)

Technical Product Manager, Digital Ads Implementation Team

  • Responsible for display and video ads implementation and support on Turner’s News and Finance websites and mobile applications – including CNN, CNN International, CNNgo, iOS and Android apps, and others.
  • Translate business requirements and user stories into development tasks. Create detailed tickets for developers with technical guidance, details and support. Work with multiple Product Managers to prioritize requests in sprints. Track and organize Jira tickets across multiple queues.
  • Facilitate communications between Domestic and International Sales and Strategic Planning, Marketing, Ad Operations, Product teams, Development teams, and QA to ensure Ad Products meet business requirements and function as intended.
  • Worked with Sales and Marketing to map out Ad Inventory on CNN’s next-gen website, launching in parallel with Turner’s company-wide migration to Operative 1 and DFP. Built out inventory in DFP and worked with site PMs and Development to implement. Successfully launched in January, 2015.
  • Involved in two specialized teams tasked with improving ad latency and viewability on CNN. Helped to improve ad request time by three seconds and improve viewability to over 70% for many major units.
  • Lead the technical design of new digital ad products to monetize CNN content. Develop working test pages and prototypes for developers to reference.
  • Provide documentation and support for Ad Operations and Trafficking.
  • Test and validate IAB standard ad units and requests as well as Programmatic and third party ad requests, such as Rubicon, AdSense, Amazon, and others.
  • Create test plans for Offshore QA, evaluate results, and create tickets as needed.
    Troubleshoot issues relating to DFP Display and Freewheel Video ad sponsorships and Programmatic campaigns.

Turner Broadcasting System, INC (October, 2013 – April, 2014)

Technical Lead, Sports Illustrated

  • Led the migration effort for moving Sports Illustrated’s off of Turner’s networks. Provided support, documentation, and content feeds to the new development team.
  • Oversaw and trained two contractors. Maintained and prioritized remaining projects and backlog.
  • Organized sprints and led daily stand-ups to ensure work progressed and blockers were removed.

Turner Broadcasting System, INC (March, 2007 – October, 2013)

Sr. Web Developer, Sports Illustrated

  • As Senior member of Sports Illustrated web development team, acted as lead developer or consultant on most high profile projects and enhancements to the site.
  • Led the development of and successfully launched many special sections – from SI Swimsuit, SI Now, Olympics, World Cup, Superbowl, NFL and NBA Drafts, and others, working with Editorial and Design staff to gather and understand requirements, Project Managers and fellow team members to break down and assign tasks, and with other functional teams across the organization as needed.
  • Assigned story points to incoming requests and participated in regular sprint planning meetings.
  • Led the development and data workflow design of the SI GameFlash live game experience – utilizing XSLT to generate flat HTML files for each game, and Javascript, jQuery, and template libraries, to poll JSON feeds and update real time scores and stats.
  • Mentored all new team members on various systems, such as content management systems, syndication engine, streaming video, sports stats data infrastructure, and legacy systems.
  • Developed on a JSP templated CMS, and successfully migrated to a Freemarker based system in 2011.
  • Provided guidance to Video team on design requirements from a web development usage perspective when building an in-house video player. Implemented several versions using Javascript callbacks and jQuery to configure Ad parameters, Omniture tracking, and display data, which included Flash and HTML5 versions. Transitioned SI to BrightCove in August, 2013.
  • Performed numerous enhancements to the site such as SEO, Site Maps, Metrics (Omniture), Video Ads (DFP, Freewheel), enabling Live Video events, providing content feeds to partners, writing maintainable and re-usable code, and by deprecating and removing old technologies, scripts, and cron jobs.
  • Performed day to day maintenance, and on-call support efficiently and responsively, jumping from technology to technology – such as Javascript, HTML, CSS, JSP, XSLT, Perl, Freemarker, and occasionally with PHP and Java. Regarded by the team as the ‘go-to guy’ when troubleshooting difficult issues.
  • Frequently work with and communicate across various internal groups to understand their product or service and help optimize its implementation, including CMS team, Structured Data for sport stats, Core Video Player, App Ops for server support, Ad services, QA, Email Marketing, SEO group, and other web development groups.
  • Created workflow improvements whenever possible for internal use by the team, and for the benefit of the Editorial staff – such as system documentation, easily readable logs of recent content,  various web tools, and quick copy-and-paste snippets.

Turner Broadcasting System, INC (August, 2005 – March, 2007)

Web Developer

  • Performed a range of web development duties for CNN, CNN Money, Sports Illustrated, Nascar, and PGA Tour, working with Turner’s CMS, syndication platform, and various utilities and web tools.

Georgia Public Broadcasting  (April, 2001 – August, 2005)

Web Developer

  • Project leader responsible for coordinating planning, design, development, database programming and maintenance of Georgia Public Broadcasting, TV, Radio, and locally produced programming web sites.
  • Developed the site with PHP and MySQL, and transitioned it to ASP and then Java and Oracle 9i utilizing jDeveloper.
  • Developed sites with maintainability for limited staff and flexibility in presentation, with a secure and intuitive content management system for producers and content providers.
  • Mentored 3 junior developers in Java, JSP, XML/XSLT, Javascript, CSS, and HTML, and supervised flash designer and interns for various projects, including an extensive website to accompany a locally produced documentary about the Fox Theater.
  • Engaged producers, content editors, public relations, fundraisers, and marketing to help transition their content and goals to the web, and created newsletters, online marketing materials, and minisites.
  • Implemented metrics software and observed a large increase in web traffic as well as online contributions.

The Banker’s Exchange (April, 2000 – December, 2000)

Web Developer, Network Administrator

  • Created prototypes and documentation for site redesign, incorporating business requirements and input from multiple departments.
  • Added new functionality to existing ColdFusion site. Monitored and improved site search engine visibility through SEO best practices.
  • Developed many promotional materials, including faxes and email with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.
  • Responsible for general network administration and desktop support of NT, ColdFusion web server, phone and fax systems, and other general office applications.

Education

Kennesaw State University, Atlanta, Ga. Computer Science. 97 credit hours.

DeKalb Community College, Clarkston, Ga. Completed requirements for Associates Degrees in Computer Science and English. Dean’s List.